Robert Bowers’ defense attorneys tried Tuesday to discredit the government’s final expert witness on mental health by questioning him about his billing rates, a 20-year-old case where he was investigated for perjury, and presentations he’s made in the past.

The defense cross-examined nationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz for three hours Tuesday morning, pushing back on his claim that the Tree of Life synagogue attacker is not mentally ill.

During previous testimony, Dietz said he believed that Bowers had the capacity to plan and the intent to kill, making him a candidate for execution.

He concluded his testimony Tuesday afternoon, and the government rested.

The defense then called its own witness in rebuttal. Dr. Peter Hauber, a psychiatrist, briefly evaluated Bowers two days after the attack to determine if he should remain on suicide watch at the Allegheny County Jail.

Hauber wrote in his report that he did not believe the defendant was delusional. But when questioned Tuesday, Hauber said he did not think his report would be used by other mental health experts to diagnose the defendant, and if it were he would have liked to have had more time.

“I should have said there may be an underlying delusional system that should be evaluated further,” Hauber said.

At the conclusion of his testimony, the defense also rested.

Closing arguments in the eligibility phase of the trial will be made Wednesday.

Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, was found guilty of killing members of the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations who were worshiping at the Squirrel Hill synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018.

Killed were Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Irving Younger, 69; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; and Richard Gottfried, 65.

The government is seeking the death penalty. The second phase of the trial, to determine whether Bowers is eligible for the death penalty, began June 26.

Dietz began testifying last Thursday as the prosecution’s second and final mental health rebuttal witness. His testimony was meant to rebut defense experts who testified that Bowers has schizophrenia and epilepsy and could not form the intent to kill necessary to be sentenced to death.

Dietz said that Bowers does not have schizophrenia, which requires delusions, but a different disorder in the same spectrum. He told the jury the defendant has schizoid personality disorder, which is not pathological in nature. Instead, he said it is a personality disorder which can be characterized as a “maladaptive pattern of relating to the world.”

To support his finding, Dietz said Bowers matches at least four of the criteria for schizoid personality disorder, including almost always choosing solitary activities; lacking close friends or confidantes; appearing indifferent to the praise or criticism of others; and showing emotional coldness, detachment or flattened affect.

Again on Tuesday, Dietz reiterated his belief that Bowers is not mentally ill because he did not experience any delusions or hallucinations, and instead shared cultural beliefs that align with white supremacists.

“If one’s weirdo beliefs are all shared by the same people in a group, that is not a delusion,” Dietz said.

During Tuesday’s wide-ranging cross-examination by defense attorney Michael Burt, Dietz repeatedly dismissed medical, court and Child and Youth Services documents from Bowers’ youth, saying that they were sloppy, shallow or misleading.

The witness also tried to downplay evidence of Bowers’ suicide attempts, threats and gestures in childhood, telling the jury that he believed the defendant’s mother exaggerated them to get him hospitalized and out of her home.

Burt countered that testimony by displaying document after document recording Bowers’ hospitalizations and suicide attempts. One record showed he attempted suicide at 10 and again at 16, when he threatened to shoot himself with a handgun in his bedroom.

In a 1985 record from the Bradley Center in Robinson, where Bowers was hospitalized for six months, a doctor wrote that Bowers had a major depressive episode and chronic dysthymia, a persistent depressive disorder.

Dietz, who interviewed Bowers for three days in May, said he did not believe Bowers met the criteria for those diagnoses at the time.

He dismissed the Bradley Center records, calling the diagnoses “impressionistic rather than documented from criteria.”

“The symptoms were not … of sufficient duration and severity to meet the diagnoses,” Dietz said. “Even if he did have major depressive disorder and dysthymia at the time, he does not anymore.”

He added later that he didn’t “have to defer to sloppy work” and that psychiatric records in the 1980s were held to a lower standard than today, and information included was often superficial and lacked follow up.

Dietz also said he believed that Bowers’ mother exaggerated her son’s suicidal behaviors.

“This was a mother who was of a mind to get her son taken away. I don’t know if that’s for her benefit or his,” Dietz said. “Sometimes it seemed to me she was overstating his bad behavior to get that result.”

Near the end of cross-examination, Dietz was asked to explain how he came to give false testimony in the Andrea Yates case in Texas in 2002.

Dietz, who was hired by the prosecution to examine Yates and determine why she killed her five children, said he misremembered details in his testimony that he thought were from an episode of “Law & Order” television show, on which he consulted, and that her crime occurred shortly after the episode aired.

Dietz learned after he returned to his home in California that no such episode had been aired.

He wrote a letter to the prosecution explaining his mistake in testimony by saying he’d confounded three cases he’d worked on into one.

After that, he realized that also was false.

“When I wrote this letter, I was confused about where this idea came from,” Dietz said Tuesday. “I was reaching to explain how I put these facts together.”

It was only later, he said, that someone alerted the prosecution that the idea had come from another television program.

Yates was found guilty and sentenced to death for the crime. But because of Dietz’s error, the conviction was thrown out, and she was retried, ultimately being found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Dietz told the jury that a grand jury investigation was conducted of both himself and two prosecutors for wrongdoing in the case, but no charges were filed.

“I’ve done my best to not remember what was one of the most traumatic, horrifying episodes of my career,” he said.

After that incident, Dietz said, he was prohibited from being hired in a case in the Pacific Northwest because he had given false testimony.

As a result of the Yates case, Dietz said his business took a major hit for several years.

But, he added, “It more than fully recovered.”

Dietz told the jury that he was being paid $800 an hour for his work in the Bowers’ case, and his firm earned more than $382,000, with five people working a total of 718 hours.

That total is higher, he said, because of the voluminous records they had to review.

Burt noted that he hired Dietz just a few years ago for a case he was defending, in which the hourly rate was $1,000.

After Dietz concluded his testimony, Hauber spent a little less than two hours on the stand. He said he worked at Allegheny County Jail for three years under a contract with Allegheny Health Network.

On Oct. 29, 2018, Bowers was brought into the jail and placed on suicide watch. Hauber’s job was to evaluate him to determine if that level of supervision and caution were necessary.

He told the jury he spent about 45 minutes crouched down next to Bowers’ cell talking to him through the food tray slot, collecting his mental health history and current status.

Hauber determined that Bowers did not need to be on suicide watch but noted in his report the defendant’s explanation for committing his crime — his hatred of Jews and immigration.

He called his conspiracy theories “pretty crazy.

“He didn’t think there were any problems with his thinking,” Hauber testified. “Unfortunately, he had the president of the United States giving him ideas to take action. He felt he definitely was getting a directive he needed to take action, and we needed to do something about this.”

After listening to Bowers talk about his life history and relationship with his mother, Hauber said he recognized the man had a troubled life trajectory. Hauber said he remembered thinking, “Why does this guy have a hard time fitting in?”

He diagnosed Bowers with adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct, but said he didn’t have a lot of confidence in that conclusion. He called it a “placeholder diagnosis, not chiseled in stone.”

“It could be a good diagnosis or a crappy diagnosis,” he said.

Hauber told the jury that he believed there was likely something wrong with Bowers.

“People don’t go in to a church to murder old people for no reason,” he said. “Obviously, this behavior wasn’t logical. I think a reasonable person would say there’s a likelihood of a lot more going on here.”

Hauber also noted in his report that Bowers told him he understood why he was in jail, and that at least he knew where his next meal would be coming from.

“I don’t know how many people would say that,” he said. “It seems kind of sad, actually, that would have been foremost in his mind.”

Defense attorney Judy Clarke asked Hauber whether, four years later, other mental health experts should have relied on his evaluation to form their own conclusions.

The witness said they should not. Mental health diagnoses develop over time, and he said he did not have the kind of time necessary in Bowers’ case. Hauber believes Bowers was moved to Butler County Prison the same day he spoke to him.

“I don’t think you should extrapolate too far from my evaluation,” he said.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)